Microsoft executives said Windows Server 8, the beta of which is expected out in the next several weeks, is the most storage-focused OS release to date.

The new OS will support Hyper-V and SQL Server running over the Samba file sharing protocol Server Message Block (SMB) v2.2, including remote direct memory access (RDMA) over Ethernet and InfiniBand.

The new file-sharing capability allows a virtualized server infrastructure to utilize shared JBOD storage through the use of RDMA-enabled network interface cards (RNICs). To date, Microsoft has qualified one 10GbE NIC from Intel and a 10GbE and InfiniBand NIC from Mellanox Technologies.